Ronnie Whelan went all controversial on us. “You have to feel sorry for England,” he said. No, seriously, he did.
Now, that statement could launch a thousand think pieces, just as they’d died down after Euro 2020, along the lines of “have we matured enough as a nation to have felt sorry for Harry Kane?”
As well as giving the Broadcasting Authority complaints people the busiest month in its history, just as they were hoping for a quiet spell, it being the festive season and all.
But Ronnie was right – unless your heart is composed solely of liquid helium, you did have to feel sorry for England. That conclusion was partly drawn on hearing Romesh Ranganathan describe, on Channel 4′s Sunday Brunch, how his three small boys went to bed bawling on Saturday night.
He tried to comfort them by telling them that this is a very young England team, so they’ll have a heap of chances to win the World Cup again. To which his seven-year-old replied: “BUT FRANCE WILL HAVE MBAPPÉ FOREVER!”
Anything that makes small people that sad is not good.
And you couldn’t but think of the young fellas at Molesey Juniors Football Club in Surrey who were visited by Sky News on Saturday morning. They were especially proud that England’s left-back, Luke Shaw, had started his footballing journey at the very same club.
“He’s shown us that anyone can be a professional footballer,” said Charlie, which probably sounded harsher than he intended, kind of like that “if Emile Heskey can play for England, so can I” chant, but his mate rescued the situation. Shaw would, he said, provide two assists in an England victory, and then “everyone’s going to look up to him in life”.
Ah God.
Match time looming.
Roy Keane turned up for ITV duty wearing a blue shirt, which was a bit provocative, while his former Manchester United colleague Mikaël Silvestre put the wind up the channel’s viewers when asked to describe Kylian Mbappé in three words.
“Extremely fast, rapid and technically gifted,” he replied, having lost his calculator.
Back on RTÉ, meanwhile, Ronnie and George Hamilton were marvelling over Morocco’s unending World Cup odyssey, their latest victims Portugal.
“The first African team to get to the semi-finals, and they await England,” said George. “England must feel the door is opening for them.”
“But they’ve still to get past this one,” Ronnie replied, in an “excusez-moi” kind of way.
Off we went and because you’ll have seen the game, we’ll make this brief: France scored and England didn’t get a penalty, which had Sam Matterface and Lee Dixon spittin’, but then England did get a penalty, which Harry converted, but 89-year-old Olivier Giroud made it 2-1 and then England won another penalty, the ball still airborne and heading for the Outer Hebrides after Harry put his laces through it.
“They needed Gary Lineker, they got Chris Waddle,” said Sam, a quip that might have seemed like a gentle-ish hoot at the time, but … ah now, Sam.
All you could think of was Waddle sitting at home in his thermals, watching his telly, munching on his pizza, minding his own business, and then being reminded of the cruellest moment in his entire career, which occurred in the dark ages of 1990.
Any how, England out. Or “NOT COMING HOME” as RTÉ captioned their post-match chat. Cold, that.
There was general sympathy on the part of the ITV lads – “top-level sport is brutal, absolutely brutal,” said Roy – but back on RTÉ Didi Hamann was making some spear-shaped observations.
“In 2018, they were winning against Croatia in the semi-finals – they lost that game. Against Italy in the Euro final last year, they were winning – they lost that game. Today, they were the better side, and they find a way to get beat. They always find a way to get beat.”
True, probably, but sometimes you have to doff your cap to the lads who beat them. And as Ronnie put it, “when you’ve got a Giroud on the pitch, you’re always in with a chance”.
(Thoughts and prayers to Lee Hendrie who told Sky Sports News viewers ahead of the game that “I look at Giroud and he doesn’t worry me with the backline we’ve got.”)
All we can say to Romesh’s little fella is that France won’t have a Giroud forever. A Mbappé, maybe, but not a Giroud.
Hugs to all the small broken-hearted English people. Your time will come. (At which point we’ll be the foaming-at-the-mouth broken-hearted).
